Crossword clues for frigate bird
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Frigate \Frig"ate\, n. [F. fr['e]gate, It. fregata, prob. contracted fr. L. fabricata something constructed or built. See Fabricate.]
Originally, a vessel of the Mediterranean propelled by sails and by oars. The French, about 1650, transferred the name to larger vessels, and by 1750 it had been appropriated for a class of war vessels intermediate between corvettes and ships of the line. Frigates, from about 1750 to 1850, had one full battery deck and, often, a spar deck with a lighter battery. They carried sometimes as many as fifty guns. After the application of steam to navigation steam frigates of largely increased size and power were built, and formed the main part of the navies of the world till about 1870, when the introduction of ironclads superseded them. [Formerly spelled frigat and friggot.]
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Any small vessel on the water. [Obs.]
--Spenser.Frigate bird (Zo["o]l.), a web-footed rapacious bird, of the genus Fregata; -- called also man-of-war bird, and frigate pelican. Two species are known; that of the Southern United States and West Indies is F. aquila. They are remarkable for their long wings and powerful flight. Their food consists of fish which they obtain by robbing gulls, terns, and other birds, of their prey. They are related to the pelicans.
Frigate mackerel (Zo["o]l.), an oceanic fish ( Auxis Rochei) of little or no value as food, often very abundant off the coast of the United States.
Frigate pelican. (Zo["o]l.) Same as Frigate bird.
Wiktionary
n. (alternative spelling of frigatebird English)
WordNet
n. long-billed warm-water seabird with wide wingspan and forked tail [syn: man-of-war bird]
Usage examples of "frigate bird".
The frigate bird would often hover high over some headland for an hour at a time, a black speck seemingly motionless, and then swoop and pick up some piece of garbage, never getting its feathers wet, rarely trying for a live fish.
A frigate bird, superb with its forked tail, came wheeling above them with motionless wings, and having obviously decided that they were not worth plundering, swooped away again towards the island where the cormorants were fishing industriously.
Now and then a great albatross or frigate bird passed within gunshot, and Gideon Spilett wondered if it was to one of them that he had confided his last letter addressed to the New York Herald.
Each male great frigate bird at mating time tried to attract the attention of females by inflating a bright red balloon at the base of his throat.
Moss covered the rude paving of their temples, and the images of their gods, on the cliffs above, were roosting places for gannet and frigate bird.
Giordino chewed on a small thigh from a frigate bird Pitt had managed to shoot with his miniature automatic pistol.
If a man in a canoe could spot a frigate bird, its cleft tail cutting the wind, he could be sure that land lay in the direction toward which the bird had flown at dusk.
Gulls and a fork-tailed frigate bird sailed inquiringly about the plane.
A single frigate bird or gull, perhaps, is the only creature stirring.